As the wine bottles became lighter we started talking about all of the fights that we had been in. My cousin Sophia, her husband Jeremy, my oldest brother Vince and his finance, Flavia, allowed me to be the 5th wheel last night. We all had a long day of family activities, which finished off with the viewing of Avatar in 3D. Vince and I had already seen it in 2D, now we just have the IMAX experience left…although Vince made the point that we could have avoided all of this and just watched it in IMAX first. The film is a visual masterpiece, but I don’t want to get into that here.

Us cousins are all fairly close and the older we get, the closer we become. I’m unfortunately not going to be joining them at Club Italia this New Year as I will be in Orlando doing my running thing (tough life, I know) so I suggested that we go get some drinks and catch up.

So like I was saying, as we started drinking more of that red grape juice we started talking about fighting. Some of the stories were hilarious, others were frightening, others, I hope, were made-up.

I wasn’t surprised that all the guys had a couple stories each. Some guys are just prone to physical confrontation. The big surprise of the evening, however, was hearing the fearless attitude of the girls who expressed an unprecedented passion for violence! I’m not saying they’re interested in joining Tyler Durden and his friends, but I was impressed with the assertiveness of these ladies!

The girls explained how they would, if they had to, defend themselves from robbers/thieves, creeps/stalkers, and girls moving in on their men!

I went back to my hotel and as I was falling asleep I began looking back on this year, which is something I often do around this time. I can recount many situations where I was given the opportunity to fight and I thought to myself, “Everyone should fight”. Most of us, I hope, will never get into a physical fight. But if we want, we can always find a fight in ourselves.

Sickness and death. Pride and temptation. Cowardliness and gluttony.

I haven’t always won, in fact, I haven’t always put up a good fight.

Like I’ve said elsewhere, I’ve experienced a lot of death this year. Just this afternoon I was in New York for my great aunts funeral. When I’m standing above a Sleeping Beauty I often wonder, “What sort of fights he get into?” “Did she face the fight or did she concede without effort?” “Did he see his suffering as a way of feeling sorry himself or as a way of developing perseverance?”

I don’t know what happens when you die, but I’d like to think that I’m starting to understand what can happen to you when you’re alive. But I think each person needs to figure that out on their own…

This year I’m going to bully myself around a bit more. I’m not going to be so easy on myself. I want to test myself by seeing what sort of faith I actually have in myself, for as the poet says, “the testing of your faith develops perseverance”.

One Comment on “everyone should fight”

love the blog. Interesting thoughts. I have found that even in the fighting you can rest and trust in God. God is definitely a warrior but what is he fighting for? There are also times he leads us in green pastures and quiet waters and protects us with his staff. Perhaps this is the time he tells us that he will fight for us and we need to trust. St. Paul seems to encourage us to “fight” the good fight. The fight of faith.